What to do when you need an hair assistant for that larger bridal party

Are you somebody who's doing bridal parties of 10 plus by yourself or you're only sticking to smaller bridal parties of the bride plus three because you're avoiding hiring an assistant? Cool. I used to do that too. The reality is you're eventually going to need to hire somebody to help you out on these bridal parties. And we can't avoid hiring an assistant forever. So for today's video, what I want to do is talk about how to communicate it to your bride as well as how to find an assistant and when to hire one. So first, know your max and stick to it. So how long would it take you to do a bridal party of a bride plus seven for. For me, I take 45 minutes per guest and I allow about an hour for the bride. So in total, when I'm looking at my max, it's going to be about six and a half hours for a bridal party of a bride plus seven. That's the maximum amount of hours that I will do on my own. Sometimes it's even less than that. Here's why you want to know your max and you want to stick to it. Because when you know your max, now that I know, it'll take me six and a half hours for a bride plus seven, no bride really wants to hear that it's going to take more than six and a half hours to get them ready. Some don't even want to hear that it's going going to take more than four hours to get their entire bridal party ready. So to avoid that future fight in your inbox, you're going to want to know what your max amount of time is so that way you can communicate it to your brides to simply find your own max time by yourself. What you're going to want to do is take your service time times the amount of services. You're going to do that for guests and you're going to do that for the bride as well. So like in My example for seven guests is 45 minutes. So you're going to multiply 45 by seven. You're going to get 315 minutes for guests services. Then you're going to add an hour, which is 60 minutes for the bride, and that's going to be a total of 375 minutes total for that bridal party. Then you're going to divide that by 60, which is per hour, and that's how I got six and a half hours. Now here's why I personally don't like to go over six and A half hours or I typically like to see it less. I typically now only do bridal parties of the bride plus five when I'm solo. So here's why. When you are in the fall months, specifically in the northeast area, I'm in New Jersey, the sun sets really early. So if you are doing seven hours for a full bridal party, you're going to have to start extremely early. But here's the kicker for this time of the year, if your bride is doing a first look, it always happens at this time of the year that their photographer wants to do all their photos before the ceremony. So if they have an earlier ceremony of like 11am and they're doing photos before, we're going to need to start at like 3am so if you're taking six, seven, eight hours for services, it's not going to fit into their timeline. Not everybody's stoked at starting at 4am, so let's avoid this fight in your inbox and you can simply just add on an assistant. Also, the earlier the start, the earlier the wake up is for you. This is literally happened to me where I forget about these earlier start times and I sign on a bride who's a bride plus six and I don't add on an assistant. Then I'm making up the timeline and we're in November. She's doing all of her photos before the ceremony, but my drive is two hours. So if I'm starting at 6am, I need to leave my house at 4am Is that fun for me? Nah. So that's when hiring an assistant will benefit you. So that way you're not burning out. Now that you know when you need to hire an assistant because you know your max amount of services, let's talk about communicating that with your bride. Because sometimes we feel like we're going to start a fight with them, but we're really not. So for me, right off the bat, I like to tell my clients earlier rather than later when I know the max amount of services. So when somebody inquires with me, they tell me how many services they're going to be getting plus themselves for the wedding day. So by knowing my max, which for example is bride +7, if they are over that, I say to them we're going to need to add on an additional stylist due to the amount of services. So that way we can save on your time. So when I am sending out their proposal and I'm giving them a quote for the wedding day, if I'm available, I let them know if they're over my max. To speed up the wedding morning process and make it easier for you, we're going to need to add on the second stylist. Communicating this earlier rather than later by knowing your max saves you from that awkward conversation a month before her wedding when you're figuring out the timeline and you're like, oh, I can't do that all by myself. Now let's talk about charging your client for adding on a second stylist. Not charging an assistant fee or charging for the assistance travel was one of the worst mistakes I made in my business in the first two years. I thought by not adding on those additional fees, such as the second stylist fee, early morning start fee, or charging my client for my assistance travel, that it was going to bring me in more business because they were saving on these fees. But short story, it did not. And what it did was it ate into my profit margins, leaving me with less money working the wedding because I was giving it all away to the second stylist. So that's why you want to charge the second stylist fee as well as charge your client for their travel. So, for example, let's just say for easy math, your client's total is $800 for herself and you add on that second stylist, but you need to be paying that second stylist $400. So you're not making $800. You're only making half of that because you're giving it away to your second stylist. That's why you add on the second stylist fee to offset your cost. Now here's why I actually love to add stylist fee and charge my client for it. Because when you are hiring out an assistant or a second stylist who necessarily does not work exclusively with you on your team, they are a contractor. And what you have to do is now find someone who is at the same part of service and skill level as you and hire them for that entire day. So you are taking your time, resources and effort hiring somebody else out as well as communicating back and forth with them instead of your client, AKA your bride doing that. Your second stylist also also doesn't live likely in the same area as you. So that's why you want to be charging a travel fee for them as well. So if you are charging the assistant fee of, let's just say, for example, $300 and then their travel fee is $150 and you are charging your bride for this, it's going to offset your profit margin. So you still wind up making the same or likely the same amount that you would without the assistant. Now something that I actually started doing that has been a game changer for me is cutting off the amount of time my bride has to eliminate or on additional guest services for hair. Doing this has allowed me to assert my boundaries. So that way if a bride a month before her wedding is dropping out four to 10 services, she's still going to have to pay for that because likely I've contracted a second stylist and now I'm taking that away from them if they're dropping out. A lot of people, this has allowed me to secure the amount that they sign on when booking with me. And doing this has allowed me to have written communication and I put this inside my contract. So that way all my clients are aware of this policy. So here's how you can start implementing this policy. So what you want to do is decide when is a good amount of time that you can actually find a good assistant who is up to your skill level that might be available for a wedding that you need help on. For me, when I thought of this, it was four months out. So at four months out is the cutoff. Nobody is allowed to be removed from the contract and nobody's allowed to be added on. The only time she's allowed to add somebody on is if I already have a second silas secured at that four month mark. Now here's how I communicate it to my clients. I actually have a clause in my contract, so here's what it says in my contract. It states four months prior to your wedding day, no services are allowed to be removed due to staffing reasons and your invoices will not be adjusted after this time. Now here's how I remind them about this. Typically when we're communicating in that first initial email, they're asking me about second stylist or they say something like, oh, I don't know how many bridesmaids I'm going to have. I haven't asked them yet. So this is when I clearly state and remind them that at that four month mark you're not allowed to remove anybody. So if they want to reach out to me and let me know a final guest count at that time, that'll be okay. I also remind all of my clients by sending out an email and letting them know a week before that four month mark hits to let me know the final guest count for services for the day of and that their invoice will not be adjusted after this time. Now let's talk about actually finding an assistant. So I'm going to be completely honest with you guys. Finding good assistance is frickin hard, okay? Because anybody who has a skill level that is really good typically has their own business or they're already secured for another wedding team. But their there are some great assistants out there. So here's how I found my assistants that I work with that I absolutely love now. Disclaimer if you are just starting out or if you're making under a hundred thousand dollars in your business, you don't need to hire a full time employee. You can do this business solo. However, hiring an assistant really helps on those larger bridal parties and it keeps you from getting burned out. And like I previously mentioned, when you're hiring an assistant or a second stylist, however you like to call it, they are a contractor, they are not an employee. So you can get away by working with assistance AK contractors, freelancers. @ this point you can also hire people as full time assistants to work larger bridal parties with you for upcoming years. Which is something that I've done as well. My favorite way to find assistance is on Facebook. So there's local Facebook groups for bridal hair and makeup pros where a lot of them will get together and they will post jobs, they'll post listings and they'll ask for other people to help out. This is how I found a lot of my good second stylist and assistants. Another good way is to think about past salons that you've worked at and reach out to any stylist that you still are in connection with or that you know like to do bridal. Instagram is another good way if you want to start reaching out to local bridal pros on Instagram and just see if you guys vibe. Even if you feel like they're established, maybe they still want to help out on weddings throughout the year. And it never hurts to ask around. So anyone that you know, any assistants or people you've previously worked with, ask around if they know any hairstylists that are up for for assisting on weddings throughout the year. Now if you're somebody who's never hired an assistant or you've never worked with a second stylist inside your business. Believe me, I've worked with a million and when I very first started out I would just let anybody work for me. So to save you the trouble, here is my criteria to find one of the best assistants. Because you don't just want to work with anyone, you want to work with somebody who is prepped and ready. And if they've never worked a wedding before, you might be in for a rude awakening because you are a CEO. So let's bring that CEO energy. Okay, so here's my assistant. Criteria number one, they need to be a morning person. We are up sometimes at 4am and we are going on long drives. Another thing, they need to be somebody who is okay with doing long drives there and back. Sometimes we're driving up to two hours for a location. For me, that's my max. So you have to think about what your travel time max is and where they're going to be traveling from. And they need to be okay with that. For me, they need to have a reliable car, reliable transportation that they get to and from these weddings. And they also, for me, need to be a people person. I am naturally an introvert, so they don't need to be an extrovert. However, they need to be a people person and not somebody who's going to be starting any conflicts on the wedding morning with my guests. They need to have a cosmetology license. If you don't have a cosmetology license, you can't practice hair in the state of New Jersey. For me, assistants also need to be extremely flexible with timelines. If they need to know what the timeline is four months out, they need to know that it's going to change multiple times. From working with wedding parties over the years, timelines will change up until like the day of. So if there's somebody who's going to be working for you that needs the timeline right then and there when you're hiring them for that day, they might not be the assistant for you. They need to be somebody who has weekend availability, such as Friday, Saturday and Sunday, because that's when I take majority of my weddings. One of the big things that they really need for me when I'm hiring a second stylist or an assistant is they need to understand that we're likely going to be working some holidays. Holidays. And they need to be okay with that. And the big one for me is they have to understand that this isn't a career path where you can just call out, I literally have to be on my deathbed or told that I absolutely cannot show up to avoid me showing up for a wedding. Like, there is nothing that is going to keep me away from my bride. And I need anyone who's working for me, assistant, second stylist, to share that exact same mindset. Calling out on a bride's once in a lifetime moment. Just isn't an option for us. It's fine coverage or you show up. Maybe that's just me, but that's the mindset that I have and that's the criteria I have when finding an assistant. So I hope that helps you out better because I find by communicating these things when hiring a second stylist right off the bat is going to keep your communication super clear and transparent and they know what to expect from you. That way you can keep all of these things in mind when you need to hire an assistant. If you want to know how to pay your assistance, definitely check out the video I have linked down below for you and I'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.